


To know the thing I am forbid to know

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, F/M, Humor, References to Shakespeare, Romance, Season 1, Theater - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 22:12:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16250810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: She'd looked for him among the faces of the men, even until the final line was spoken.





	To know the thing I am forbid to know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tortoiseshells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/gifts), [sagiow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagiow/gifts).



“I’m sorry to have missed the performance,” Henry said. The light from the window caught the plane of his cheek, his hands as he gestured. “I was with Corporal Pickford,” he added. The young officer had suffered mightily, his wounds grievous and likely to be lethal, but he could be comforted only by increasingly large doses of their rapidly diminishing supply of laudanum and Henry’s prayers.

“I understand,” Emma said. “He couldn’t have spared you. We missed you, but not as much as he would.” She felt the familiar pang of guilt at her selfish desire, this time for Henry’s admiring attention, running up against another’s greater, incontrovertible need. It was small consolation that she now wished for the approval of a devout minister and not a new silk ballgown trimmed with Chantilly lace or the beautiful roan filly to ride out on a Sunday afternoon.

“You’re very kind,” Henry said, his voice low, a little hoarse. From a long evening of psalms and hymns, half-spoken, half-hummed, or from something else—some impulse he must quell, some other declaration he dared not utter?

“No, I’m a silly chit of a girl—if Nurse Hastings is to be believed,” Emma said, sighing. “Miscast if you listen to Matron Brannan, a little late off the mark if Dr. Foster is right, though at least he stopped calling me the Hoopskirt Assassin in favor of Peaseblossom. Though I think that was to tease Nurse Mary into laughing.” 

“You’re wonderful—that is, I’m sure you were wonderful,” Henry said quickly. Emma was suddenly glad he had not been in the audience, watching her with those dark blue eyes, making her forget her lines, her cues, even Welles stepping on her foot. How could she have recited one single, glorious, romantic line with Henry regarding her as if she were Hippolyta, Titania herself? She felt herself blush as she hadn’t since the summer she was fourteen and in love with her neighbor’s cousin Edward, just back from his Grand Tour, far too old to ever take an interest in her, safe enough to adore. Henry was older and ought to be safe and she adored him but she couldn’t say he didn’t take an interest.

“All of you, it’s a wonder that you planned it so well, performed, that you gave all the men such a night. A respite,” Henry said, saving them both. Emma felt the most peculiar, compelling urge to touch his cheek with her hand, to feel the roughness of his whiskers, the strength of his jaw. To discover whether he would take her hand in his or turn his face into her palm. Or would he turn away so swiftly her hand would fall, an answer she wouldn’t want to recognize.

“It was a labor of love,” Emma said, smiling at the memories of the soldiers in their get-ups and Nurse Mary’s gentle hands supporting first this man, then the next, her eyes bright. Dr. Foster’s ebullience when Nurse Mary attended to him and his solemnity when she recited.

“Not Love’s Labour Lost?” Henry said, startling her with the jest, with his literary allusion to something other than the Bible, with the way he sounded saying the word _love_ to her.

“Certainly not. I think we can only count it a gain,” Emma replied, wondering what Henry would say in return, when the moment seemed to call for no words at all.

“As I said, I’m sorry that I missed it. That I missed you—Peaseblossom,” he finished with a rare, roguish grin, that lit his face like the candles had that played at footlights an hour before. It was better than a kiss, Emma told herself that, and she nearly, very nearly believed it.

**Author's Note:**

> And here is Henry Hopkins, explaining why he did not see the show. I played around with Love's Labour Lost in this one. I tried to pick a famous actor's name that didn't appear in the ur-text now, hence: Pickford (I think I'm safe in that regard!). Jed teases Emma using references from A Midsummer Night's Dream though the Mercy Street Players put on Romeo and Juliet-- I can't imagine Jed Foster would ever stick to one play if he thought something else provided better mockery.


End file.
